Coppola Re-Cuts Godfather THREE for December 2020 Release

I've just read that Francis Coppola has re-cut the problematic "Godfather III" for release to movie theaters(a little bit) and then streaming in December of 2020.

There is a trailer. Additionally, there a short video in which Coppola looks quite thin, frail and old(he is) to announce this re-cut. The film will have a "new beginning and a new ending" -- whether from old deleted scenes or existing footage, I don't know.

"It is to ponder."

First, in this lockdown/quarantine year of 2020, very few theaters will get this film and so the ability to really promote this as a "movie event" is limited.

Second, Godfather III has always had to live down its reputation as not matching the two-time Best Picture excellence of I and II, for any number of reasons, but for starters: being released in 1990, 18 years after I and 16 years after II, simply put too much time between the original epic and this one.

Third, Coppola made the disastrous decision, after Winona Ryder dropped out, to cast his own daughter in the key role of Michael Corleone's daughter. Her acting wasn't up to that of the seasoned players around her, and somewhat embarrassingly, she didn't physically match up to scenes based on her "beauty."

And the original great cast of characters -- which had already lost Brando and Caan for Godfather II -- now lost Robert Duvall for III. Irony: III ended up being a showcase movie for the neglected women of the original: Diane Keaton and Talia Shire. But Keaton had become a different kind of actress since 1972, a star with a certain flibbergibbet comedy presence more often than drama. She didn't "fit" The Godfather anymore. Conversely, Shire got her chance to shine as a cold Coreleone plotter of business murder, this time.

I'm among those who find Godfather III to certainly be entertaining enough. Its got a few classic lines ("I try to get out and they keep pulling me back in "-- meaningful for working life), an interesting Vatican-based plot based on real life and entanglements with Paramount itself, and one really fun mass murder attempt(a machine-gunning via helicopter on Mafia men locked in a skyscraper banquet room) that feels more like Die Hard than Coppola.

But now, 20 years after a movie that was almost 20 years after its original -- comes Francis Coppola to try to make it better. We shall see.

One irony: the bad actress of 1990 -- Coppola's daughter -- is now an Oscar-winning screenwriter and a director of her own good reputation. Will that improve her performance retroactively?